6sense is an AI-powered ABM platform that is focused on arming revenue teams with the right information to engage with the right accounts. It aggregates buying signals like website visits, email opens, and product review hits. It then leverages machine learning to help revenue teams automate their workflows. In this episode, Sandhya Hegde chats with 6Sense’s CEO Jason Zintak about their path to product-market fit. Join us as we discuss: (1:26) Jason’s background and he made the decision to join ...
May 22, 2023•29 min
Hex is a data platform that allows teams to streamline their entire workflow using collaborative notebooks, BI, and docs. Hex offers data scientists the ability to work together to deliver their insights and empowers both business users and data analysts to quickly find the answers they need to do their jobs. Today, the company has over 500 enterprise customers. In this episode, Sandhya Hegde chats with Hex’s co-founder and CEO Barry McCardel about their path to product-market fit. Join us as we...
May 08, 2023•46 min
The space of enterprise search and knowledge management is on the cusp of being dramatically transformed by AI-native tools that can find, analyze and synthesize information instantly for knowledge workers. An emerging leader in this category is Glean. Valued at $1B and serving over a hundred enterprise customers today, Glean leverages an enterprise-grade knowledge graph and LLMs (large language models) to help companies find and use their institutional knowledge across hundreds of internal tool...
Apr 24, 2023•44 min
Vercel is an open-source platform that helps front-end developers build and ship dynamic web applications leveraging Jamstack (https://jamstack.org/). Last valued at $2.5B, Vercel was founded in 2015 by CEO Guillermo Rauch and now serves over 30,000 companies. In this episode, guest host Wei Lien Dang (General Partner at Unusual Ventures) interviews Vercel CEO and Founder Guillermo Rauch about their path to product-market fit. Join us as we cover: (1:24) How Guillermo came up with idea for creat...
Apr 10, 2023•41 min
Amplitude is the world’s #1 product analytics platform, currently trading at $1.6B. Launched in 2014, Amplitude started out as a mobile analytics tool, and eventually expanded to include all digital analytics, experimentation and personalization. The company now serves over 1900 customers. In this episode, CTO Curtis Liu shares the story of how Amplitude was created after he and his co-founder, Spenser Skates, decided to pivot when their initial product idea didn’t find traction. They explored s...
Mar 06, 2023•43 min
In this highlights episode, host Sandhya Hegde shares her framework for the three modes of product-led growth and how some iconic companies pursuing PLG found product-market fit: Snyk, Webflow and Nextdoor. Join us as we discuss: 3.02 : The three modes of PLG—fast-working (Snyk), paradigm-shifting (Webflow), and habit-forming (Nextdoor) 6: 30: How Snyk challenged the way security products were traditionally adopted by focusing on developers 14: 47: How Nextdoor executed early interviews with use...
Feb 20, 2023•50 min
Harness is an emerging leader in the CICD (continuous development) space. Last valued at $3.7B in a 2022 fundraise, this is Jyoti Bansal’s second enterprise software unicorn. His first startup Appdynamics was acquired by Cisco the night before their IPO in 2017. In this episode, Harness CEO Jyoti Bansal and Unusual founder John Vrionis take us back 15 years to when Appdynamics first got started. They walk us through their learnings around customer discovery and the journey from having a unique p...
Feb 06, 2023•39 min•Ep. 16
LaunchDarkly is a pioneer in the feature management space. Founded in 2014, while the agile and cloud movements were still relatively nascent, LaunchDarkly was ahead of its time. They have now scaled to a $3 billion company, serving over 4,000 customers. In this episode, LaunchDarkly Co-Founder and CEO Edith Harbaugh takes us back to her initial insight as an engineering manager and product leader at TripIt, deeply versed in the value of systematic feature flagging, and keenly aware of how under...
Jan 23, 2023•41 min•Ep. 15
Jasper is a leading AI-driven content platform with over 80,000 customers. Going from launch to unicorn status in 18 months, they have been one of the fastest companies to cross $1M in MRR with a new product. In this episode, Jasper Co-Founder Dave Rogenmoser shares his story of persistence, pivots, and market validation as he and his co-founders went from building a digital marketing agency to a hypergrowth AI unicorn. Join us as we discuss: External and internal signals that it’s time to pivot...
Jan 09, 2023•42 min•Ep. 14
Aurora Solar is a solar design platform that has accelerated small business growth in the solar energy industry. Through it, vendors and homeowners have instant access to crucial data about home solar projects. In this episode, Co-founder at Aurora Solar Chris Hopper shares how he went from installing solar panels to managing a $4B climate tech unicorn that has powered over 10 million solar projects. Join us as we discuss: Building a product around ignored customer needs Bootstrapping growth wit...
Dec 05, 2022•41 min•Ep. 13
Before Webflow, creating a website required both a designer and a coder. Now, designers can build websites without code or sacrificing their artistic vision. Listen, as Co-Founder of Webflow , Bryant Chou talks about his journey turning a simple idea of simplifying website-creation into a $4 billion dollar company. Join us as we discuss: Webflow’s organic marketing strategies Lessons learned from Webflow’s private beta How Bryant discovered the product-market fit for Webflow Webflow’s product ro...
Nov 28, 2022•44 min•Ep. 12
SOC2 certification is a daunting process for startup founders but increasingly necessary to land customers. Our guest today was among the first to understand how startup founders thought about security and compliance and set out to create the automated compliance category. Listen in as Christina Cacioppo , CEO and co-found er of Vanta talks about her journey to creating the leading automated security and compliance platform that is valued at $1.6B today. Join us as we discuss: How Christina appr...
Nov 21, 2022•43 min•Ep. 11
The SQL database that sits under most applications in the world is old technology that was not built with the Cloud in mind. Now we live in a Cloud-Native world and it's important for developers to have a database that offers the same guarantees as legacy SQL database technology while also taking advantage of life in the cloud. Listen in as Peter Mattis Co-founder and CTO at Cockroach Labs talks about the cloud-native, distributed SQL database that provides next-level consistency, ultra-resilien...
Nov 14, 2022•46 min
In today's episode, we hear from Andy Rachleff , who coined the term “product-market fit” which served as the inspiration for this podcast. Andy Rachleff is a legendary Venture Capitalist who originally coined the term "product-market fit." Andy has had an incredibly accomplished career in the tech industry, co-founding Benchmark Capital in 1995 and Wealthfront in 2008. Andy has mentored and guided hundreds of founders and investors, and in this episode talks about why understanding product-mark...
Oct 31, 2022•48 min•Ep. 9
Early revenue can sometimes fool you into thinking that you have product-market fit. Startups begin to focus on growth without having solved the core problem their customers are playing them to address. In this episode, we are joined by Lars Albright , a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, where he leads investments in vertical SaaS and fintech startups. Lars is a three-time founder of enterprise software companies, having sold two of his companies to Apple and Mastercard. Today, Lars joins us ...
Oct 17, 2022•44 min
Successful startups need to solve a problem, but there is a big difference between a founder knowing a problem exists in the abstract and a founder experiencing the pain points firsthand and developing ways to solve it. Laura Behrens Wu is the Founder and CEO of Shippo, a shipping platform designed to give every merchant access to the best-in-class tools and technology reserved for retail giants. Over 100k brands trust Shippo to ensure their customers love how their products are delivered. In th...
Oct 10, 2022•26 min
Since the rise of COVID-19, every company has adopted remote work, and our guest's mission is to create a more equal world by making it possible for talented professionals to work from any country they choose to. Tony Jamous is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of Oyster, a global employment unicorn that helps companies hire employees and contractors anywhere in the world. Before Oyster, Tony was the founder of Nexmo (2010), a Twilio competitor that was acquired by Vonage in 2016 for $230M. ...
Sep 26, 2022•41 min
While some startups experiment and pivot their way into product-market fit, others have founders with a unique insight that needs persistence. After a rough 6 year start as a company between 2012-2018, Arctic Wolf hit a tipping point driven by market awareness. In the past 4 years, the growth rate of the business has been phenomenal. Founder Brian NeSmith joins us to discuss his conviction to keep going and how he kept his talented team together even when results weren't what they expected. Bria...
Sep 12, 2022•45 min
StackRox is a security startup born in 2015. After many initial setbacks, StackRox went on to become a leader in container security, riding the Kubernetes wave and helping cloud-native companies secure their software. Wei Lien Dang joins us today to discuss how StackRox found product-market fit. Wei Lien Dang is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures . Before joining the venture capital firm, Wei was the Co-Founder of StackRox. StackRox became one of the first startups in the container security w...
Sep 02, 2022•36 min
Henry Ward joins us to talk about how his team of fewer than 20 employees scaled their startup, then known as eShares, to product-market fit and eventually became a household name in equity management software. Henry Ward is the Co-Founder and CEO of Carta. This $7.4B business has created a new category of software in equity management by helping companies and investors manage their cap tables, valuations, investments, and equity plans. Henry gives us insight into the early stages of Carta: the ...
Aug 18, 2022•53 min
How do you know when an early-stage startup idea is working, and what do you do if it isn’t? Today we talk with Sarah Leary , the Co-Founder of Nextdoor , the iconic neighborhood network that enables local communities to receive trusted information, give and get help, get things done, and build real-world connections with those nearby. Sarah gives us insight into the early days of Nextdoor: the pivots they made, community-building strategies they used, and how they found product-market fit on th...
Aug 01, 2022•55 min
When running a startup, finding product-market fit is a crucial measurement to the success of the business. Today, we talk about the cybersecurity company over 2.5 million developers have tried, Snyk. Snyk is a developer-friendly security platform for anyone responsible for securing code. Hear our conversation with Co-Founder Guy Podjarny and Ben Williams , VP of Product at Snyk, about the early days of Snyk and how they have found product-market fit. How Snyk has found product-market fit How Sn...
Jul 18, 2022•1 hr 4 min
How do software startups find product-market fit? How do you know if you have it? What does it take to get there? These questions keep every early stage founder up at night. In this introductory episode, we discuss our goals for the show and who it’s for. Hear our conversation with Sandhya Hegde, General Partner at Unusual Ventures about The biggest challenges faced by the startup ecosystem today Why we are launching this podcast for early stage enthusiasts Why the product-market fit playbook ma...
Jul 11, 2022•9 min
